New York City public school students will only head to classes four days next week.
Public schools will be closed on Friday, June 19, in observance of Juneteenth, a federal holiday.
Juneteenth, which is short for June Nineteenth, honors the end to slavery in the United States. Juneteenth is widely regarded as the longest-running African American holiday. It has been a federal holiday since 2021.
Juneteenth marks the day when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, in 1865 to take control of the state and ensure all enslaved people be freed. The troops’ arrival came more than two years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
It marks the final day off for public schools in New York before the last day of school on Friday, June 26.
The public school academic calendar includes some two dozen days off between the first day and the last day of classes.
The calendar gives time off every year for religious holidays like Good Friday, Yom Kippur and Eid al-Fitr, and week-long breaks for winter recess, mid-winter recess and spring recess, which include Christmas and Passover. Diwali has also been added recently as a public school holiday.
The school calendar also allows time off each year for Italian Heritage Day/Indigenous Peoples’ Day (Columbus Day), Election Day, Thanksgiving, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Memorial Day and Juneteenth. Dates for parent-teacher conference days for elementary, middle schools and high schools are also posted in the calendar.
You can go here to view more important dates for the 2025-2026 public school academic year.
For those looking to plan ahead, the first day of public school in New York City for the 2026-2027 school year is Thursday, Sept. 10.